The Weekly Grapevine

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Next year sees sweeping changes to Formula One's technical regulations, which are expected to provoke significant changes to the mechanical and aerodynamic characteristics of F1 cars.

The most discussed innovation has been regenerated kinetic energy, whilst the reintroduction of slicks and the simultaneous ban on aerodynamic appendages have received comparatively scant attention.

These changes should result in cars which are not only innovative though Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems, but facilitate increased overtaking - from, some may say, a close to zero starting point - and cut cornering speeds for safety reasons by reducing the car's aerodynamic reliance and increasing its mechanical grip.

A while ago, Grapevine had sight of the studies as presented to the teams by the FIA's Overtaking Working Group consisting of Rory Byrne (leader), Paddy Lowe and Pat Symonds, and had thus discussed the results with various team members.

They were, however, reluctant to express opinions - certainly on the record - simply as the swingeing changes meant teams were still undertaking wind tunnel and computational fluid dynamics studies prior to conceptualizing their cars and so had no concrete base to comment on.

Then, the symbiotic relationship between downforce and mechanical grip meant that comment should ideally be sought from an engineer with an in-depth understanding of both disciplines.

So autosport.com requested that Toyota permit its Senior General Manager (Chassis) Pascal Vasselon to explain the impact of the changes.

The Frenchman (45) began his career in the aerospace industry before joining Renault F1 to work on suspension design, where he interacted closely with Michelin. When the car manufacturer departed the sport, he switched to the French tyre manufacturer, becoming involved with Toyota's Le Mans project before going on to head Michelin's F1 activities.

Vasselon joined Toyota Motorsport GmbH in 2005 as Head of Chassis R&D before stepping up to his present position, which obviously entails overseeing the Toyota TF109. Given his exposure to aerospace, suspension and tyre technology, Pascal is ideally qualified to provide the low-down on the 2009 regulations.

Here is what he had to say...

Q: The OWG initially targeted a downforce reduction of 50%, yet F1 folk are today talking of real reductions of around 25%, which is in-turn expected to decrease as the engineers hone the cars. So, has the OWG actually failed to reach its target?

Pascal Vasselon: First of all, the downforce reduction was one of the targets of the working group, but there was a double objective. The first was to change the split between aerodynamic grip and mechanical grip, which is supposed to form a mechanism to favour overtaking, and the second objective was to participate to the control of the car's speed. So this (50%) was the initial target. Don't forget that engineers are very good and paid to get back the performance.

So it is clear that the 50% was a starting point, and it was obvious for everyone that from this starting point we would progress. I have to say the 50% was about right. It means when we started from our 2008 car and we 'legalised' (conceptualized) it for 2009 that's roughly what we got.

Q: A 50% reduction?

Vasselon: Yes. So as a starting point I would say it was about right.

Q: And then you started working to improve it.

Vasselon: As normal, yes, as everyone expected. Everyone starting working on the regulations, and yes progress has been made. To clearly quantify it at this stage is a little bit too early. For sure we'll get more than this 50% of downforce; how much more still has to be seen. But the fact that it would progress from there was known from the beginning, but at some point things had to be reset a little bit.

So your estimate is? 20%? 25%?

Vasselon: It's too early at the moment to give any figure.

Q: If we take the mechanical grip increase, if downforce comes down 50%, mechanical grip will go up roughly how much from a target point of view?

Vasselon: It was supposed to be between ten and fifteen percent, it seems we have somewhere between eight and twelve (%) so it's not too far away. We are talking roughly about two seconds per lap uniquely due to slicks, so this is as expected. So the drop of downforce, because there will be a drop in downforce, whether it's 20 or 30%. So, we should end up with cars that are roughly the same speed as they are this year.

Q: With the added advantage that hopefully the 'dirty' air will be less which means you can overtake better and the mechanical grip should also improve the overtaking.

Vasselon: Yes, had we not done anything the 2009 cars would have been between one and one point five seconds faster than 2008, even on grooved tyres. And obviously we should get the benefit of the intention of the regulations, which is to increase the importance of mechanical grip and ensure we still get aero downforce (which) is less sensitive to the wake of another car whilst itself generating less wake generating.

Q: How much will the chance of overtaking be improved?

Vasselon: Again, if we do what we targeted it is a step in the right direction. To quantify is extremely difficult. You need an objective target. In a simulator it is quite easy (to estimate), but to quantify that in terms of how many overtaking manoeuvres you will see in a race is close to impossible. What you can expect is a step in the right direction.

Q: But there is another way of quantifying, which the OWG did. They said that at present you need to be two seconds a lap quicker than the car in front to be able to overtake cleanly. Do you think this will reduce by one second, one and a half seconds?

Vasselon: You can give figures always, but at the moment we hope to make a step in the right direction. To give precise quantification is just impossible.

Q: Will the centre of aero pressure move?

Vasselon: No.

Q: Stay exactly where it was?

Vasselon: You need a given figure of aero balance which is related to mass balance. As soon as you decide your mass balance, you need aero balance which corresponds. One of the targets of the regulations was that the aero balance variation had to be under control. One of the targets of the regulations was to ensure aero balance consistency, not a movement of the aero balance.

In order to do that the OWG went to a big front and rear wing, reducing the share of the diffuser simply because the studies showed the way to generate downforce which was less 'dirty' was via the downforce generated by the wings.

Q: But the balance would have moved with the reduction of the downforce, so the cars will be more biased rearwards. Is that correct?

Vasselon: You need to get maximum front downforce.

Q: How do you do that? Because there will be a very low front wing, is that not dangerous?

Vasselon: It will work better, this wing being closer to the ground will work better. What you could imagine is that the cars will be a little bit more pitch sensitive, because the wings are working closer to the ground. At the moment we're starting development to gain back the necessary front aero balance. Now we can see it's under control. Within the concept of the regulations we don't think we will struggle to achieve the aero balance we need. So what the regulations should give is better consistency of this aero balance.

Q: But the front wing being closer to the ground is there not more chance that it gets knocked off?

Vasselon: This is the nature of the problem. Of course from the very beginning we knew the front wing is more exposed. It was one of the very important items of the OWG. It (a low front wing) is really important in the concept of this set of regulations, so we went for it. Yes, it will be more exposed and already we are spending quite a lot of time to regulate the endplates and all that will be visible from the front and from the side to make sure that these endplates cannot cut a tyre, for instance.

So there are a lot of precautions, there is an article dealing with it to make sure that all the edges visible from the front and from the side are made so that they cannot cut a tyre for example.

Q: Will the cars look very, very different to present designs, or will they just be this year's car without the flips and flaps and wings and winglets and whatever?

Vasselon: I would guess that most of the teams will have started from a legalized 2008 car, but now I would think that most of the cars would look pretty different.

Q: Different to this year, or different amongst each other? Will they still look fairly similar to each other?

Vasselon: It's a guess! I would expect that everyone is starting from a clean sheet, without seeing anything to copy from. I would expect that next year we would see more differences to this year, so you have two conflicting things here: on the one hand the regulations are more restrictive, more prescription in certain areas - for example, in the front wing, the middle section is prescribed - so this should lead to cars looking more the same. But on the other hand what is very different compared to last year's for example is that no one has someone else's car to copy. So aerodynamicists are free to be more creative, so even within more restrictive regulations I would expect to have, at least at the beginning, cars which are not the same. Then very quickly...

Q: Finally, talking packaging of KERS. Because of the different aero the car will look different, but the cars could also look different because of KERS as you've got to package capacitors or batteries or whatever you choose to specify. How much has that affected the packaging of the car and therefore how much does that effect the aero of the car?

Vasselon: From a visual point of view the KERS will not be visible. So in most cases it will be very difficult to detect a car which runs KERS from one which doesn't. Yes, it's big, I think 30, 35 kilo, but not big to the point that you can say 'here's where the KERS is mounted'. We have already been discussing this in the last Technical Working Group (TWG), not all the teams, but several, are planning to put KERS below the fuel cell, so this kind of integration will make KERS almost invisible.

Q: That's if they're running a battery.

Vasselon: No, why?

Q: Well if you're running a mechanical system, then you can't put it under the fuel cell, the flywheel...'

Vasselon: You have different types of flywheels. Starting from the same energy storage concept the flywheel, you can either drive it mechanically via the gearbox and you have to be reasonably close to the 'box, of course. But you also have electrical flywheels, the flywheel is just a motor generator. In this case you can put it where you want, you just need wires.

Q: And if you run capacitors? Where do you put them?

Vasselon: Anywhere.

Thus it is clear that the 2009 cars will look substantially different from their predecessors, with substantial variations amongst them, certainly during the early races. It is also clear that the 50% target will not be achieved, but, as Vasselon points out, the 2009 cars would have been around two seconds a lap quicker than the current crop had downforce restrictions not been introduced.

And, that would have been without slicks - the return of which is the best news of all. It always was an anomaly that the very category which invented the concept - which quickly spread down the ranks to karting - is the only mainstream racing formula running crude grooves.

Welcome back, smooth tyres and mechanical grip!

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- The Autosport.com Team

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